can anyone recommend a hotel in Rome for post~cruise stay? after our honeymoon cruise my **at that time will be ** husband and i would like to stay 3 nights in Rome and i have no idea where to start.

Ah, shucks. Another one bites the dust. Why didn't you say you were single a couple years ago? ;-o

Seriously, congratulations and best wishes!

As to hotels for a post-cruise stay in the Eternal City, the most seamless option is to book a hotel package through your cruise line. The cruise lines' hotel packages include the transfer from the pier in Civitiavecchia to the respective hotels, and the cruise lines have English-speaking staff at a desk in the hotel to coordinate optional tours of various local attactions with English-speaking guides and to assist with any other needs that you may have.

I have twice stayed at the Crowne Plaza St. Peter's, which is in a residential neighborhood behind Vatican City, and look forward to doing so again. This stately grand lady offers convenient pedestrian access to the neighborhood's outstanding restaurants and shops, which serve locals, and a complementary shuttle to the downtown area for convenient access to the city's metro and major attractions. Some of the cruise lines offer packages at this hotel.

If you book both your hotel package and your flights through your cruise line, the air package will include the transfer from the hotel to the airport. If you are booking your flights separately, either directly or through your travel agent, you will be responsible for your own transportation from the hotel to the airport -- and it takes over an hour by taxi, so it's not cheap. Many of Rome's better hotels, including the Crowne Plaza St. Peter's, do offer complementary shuttles to the airport that arrive there in time for the later (9:00 AM or after) flights back to the States. If you are booking your flights separately, book the latest flight out of Rome that you can.

If you want to tour the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel or other major attractions, I highly recommend booking a local tour. The Vatican Museum typically has a cue that extends half way around a city block, three or four wide, for general admission, but the tour groups have reserved group admission times so they bypass the tour and go right in via the group entrance, which is next to the general entrance, when they arrive. If the cruise line's staff at your hotel don't offer a tour of the Vatican Museum and the Sistine Chapel, or if you arrange your hotel independently, the concierge at the hotel will gladly arrange a tour with an English-speaking guide for you.